


hope and a spider

by strawberry_sky



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 13:18:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17345933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberry_sky/pseuds/strawberry_sky
Summary: from the perspective of fjord as he's being held prisoner by the iron shepherds, with no idea of where his friends are or what's going to happen next.





	hope and a spider

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was originally written in the week before 2.29: The Stalking Nightmare aired, when we had no idea what the status of Fjord/Jester/Yasha was or what the rest of the Iron Shepherd's dungeon looked like, and was my speculation on what could have happened to the missing party members and what might have happened if spider-Frumpkin had been just a little bit more stealthy. it was previously published at https://drinkingdeadpeopletea.tumblr.com/post/176595638245/turns-out-i-love-critical-role-so-much-it-actually

Fjord awoke slumped on the floor of the cage, with the iron taste of his own blood in his mouth. A few seconds passed before the pain came flooding back, and Fjord pressed his lips tightly together to keep from making a sound, trying instead to feign continued unconsciousness.

He had lost track of how long he’d been in the dungeon. A day? Two? It had all just been a blur of pain and fear and anger as he drifted in and out of consciousness. His hands were still chained behind him–the slavers had opted to leave him bound after realizing that Fjord could summon his falchion into his hand even if it was taken from him. His shirtless torso was covered in gashes and burn marks from the instruments of the torturers. It hurt to move. It hurt to breathe.

Before this, he’d been in the cart for around two days, crammed into the small cage with Jester and Yasha’s bodies pressed against his. Without their hands or their voices, there was nothing in the way of spellcasting they could do. Jester had managed to get the gag out of her mouth once, but the silencing spell they’d all been placed under extended to the carts, and her mouth moved desperately and noiselessly for several minutes before the slippery, sadistic halfling had come to check on them and had roughly shoved the gag back in her mouth.

Fjord’s wrists were rubbed raw and bloody from trying to pull them out of the manacles. If he could just get his hands free, summon his sword–

He could tell Jester and Yasha were both praying through most of the cart ride, screaming out to their gods in the silence. Fjord had tried to reach out to his own otherworldly ally, had let himself slip into unconsciousness in hopes that he’d dream again of water and glowing yellow eyes. But there was nothing.

The second day after they’d been taken, the cart had shuddered to a stop with a suddenness that had thrown Fjord against Yasha’s chest and woken Jester from her fitful doze. All three of them had looked at each other with wide eyes, barely daring to hope. Why had the carts stopped? Had the rest of the Mighty Nein tracked them here? Could they get them out?

They’d sat there, trying desperately to get a sense of what was going on even though the silencing spell kept them from hearing anything aside from their own breathing, ready to at any moment see Molly throw the covering aside and flash them a smile, or to see Nott slip beneath it to pick the lock.

But then, after only a short minute or two, the cart moved on. Fjord saw Jester’s eyes well up with tears, and he shifted his position slightly so that she could bury her face in his shoulder. His gaze met Yasha’s, and he could see his own fears reflected in her dichromatic eyes. If that had been the Mighty Nein, they had lost. Had they managed to get away, or had they been bound and thrown in one of the other carts? Or something even worse?

Fjord didn’t want to think about it. That probably hadn’t been their friends. Maybe one of the carts had broken a wheel, or there had been a tree in the road. That seemed more likely than the idea that their companions were mounting some sort of dangerous rescue mission. If they were smart, they’d try to get help before coming after them.

If they were coming at all.

 _I would come for them,_ Fjord had realized. _I would come for any of them._

When the carts had pulled up to the back of the fortress, Fjord had been separated from Jester and Yasha. He still remembered the look on their faces as they’d been dragged away from him--fear and tearful anger in Jester’s eyes, cold fury in Yasha’s.

The dungeon echoed with screams, sobs, moans. Fjord had heard tales of this sort of thing, slavers who specialized in “breaking” their prisoners, shattering them until their spirits, and often their minds, were gone. Fjord had been trying to hold on to hope, and, in the absence of that, to hold on to anger. The physical torture made it hard, but the screams made it even harder. Some of the screams were Jester--he was pretty sure she was in the room right next to him. He hated hearing her in pain, but at least it meant she was still alive. He hadn’t heard anything that sounded like Yasha, and he didn’t know whether that was a good thing.

But the worst were the screams of the children. Those bastards had children in here, and they were torturing them.

If anything was going to break Fjord, it was going to be that.

There was one slaver in the room right now, a large human who was missing one eye and half his teeth. Currently, he had a large crossbow in his hand, and was standing in the middle of the room, watching the door as if he expected someone to come through.

Fjord frowned. Was this man standing guard? They were in a fortress in the middle of nowhere, in cells in the basement. What was there to guard against?

It was as he was watching the man, puzzling over this, that he noticed a spider. A very large spider, crawling its way across the floor, over to Fjord’s cage. Fjord watched as the spider crawled its way up the bars and stayed there, hairy legs holding it in place, and looked at Fjord, more intently than he’d thought it was possible for a spider to look.

And then it lifted a single leg and waved.

Fjord blinked. The spider continued waving, and maybe it was just a trick of the light, but it seemed as if the spider had strangely ginger hair.

And then, as he was staring at it, it disappeared, in a way that was all too familiar. Fjord could almost hear the snapping of Caleb’s fingers. He could almost hear the quiet Zemnian voice: _Hold on. We’re coming._

And for the first time since their fateful second watch, Fjord smiled.


End file.
